


Beliefs

by Xie



Series: Only Time [6]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-18
Updated: 2014-05-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 15:53:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1654142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xie/pseuds/Xie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Brian is in Los Angeles on a business trip, something terrible happens to Justin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

  
  


**Beliefs, Chapter One**  
By Xie

" _You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them_."  
-Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

**Justin’s POV**

I was lying across the corner of a pile of pillows on the floor of Daphne's apartment, looking at my feet. I'd kicked off my shoes a while ago, and for some reason had on only one sock.

"Where's my sock?"

She took a drag on the joint and handed it to me, her voice choked. "I told you. On the sofa."

I looked at the smoke floating away from the joint in my hand. "Oh, yeah." I held my feet up over my head and examined my toes carefully. I wiggled the ones inside the sock, then the bare ones, and then the ones in the sock again.

"Gimme." Daphne was reaching out for the joint, which had gone out in my hand.

I shook my head. "You've had enough."

"Me?" She squeaked when she said it.

"We've had enough," I amended. "You can't just drown your sorrows in drugs and alcohol."

She snorted. "Since when? And why not?"

I let my feet drop to the floor with a thud. "You also require large amounts of junk food. It's something that I learned at a young age from Brian."

She sighed and nuzzled her head into my hair. "I suppose we could order a pizza."

I shook my head. "Takes too long. Don't you have any food here?"

She considered. "I have microwave brownies. We could eat them while we wait for the pizza. They're ready in ten minutes."

"Perfect."

The pizza hadn't arrived by the time we finished eating all the brownies, which really did only take ten minutes to make, and then approximately two minutes to eat. "They don't give you very many," I informed her, wiping a large smear of chocolate off her cheek with my finger, then wiping my hand on my jeans. "What was that, four?"

She picked up the box. "I think we were supposed to cut them up into smaller squares. It says it makes 24 brownies."

"That's ridiculous." I took the box away from her, and tossed it in the sink.

She agreed. "I really think they make them so that one woman with PMS or a broken heart can get the instant gratification of making and eating them all without dirtying more than one bowl or having to leave the kitchen."

I was looking in the refrigerator, but there was nothing. I started on the cupboards. "You know, I remember when I broke up with Ethan, I didn't eat at all." I pulled out a box of microwave popcorn. "Let's make this while we wait for the pizza."

She put the package in the microwave and hit the "popcorn" button. We stood there watching it. "You weren't in love with Ethan."

"I thought I was."

She tipped her head to one side. "True, but you weren't, so your heart wasn't really broken. At least, not over him."

I watched the bag getting bigger in the microwave. "Are you in love with Alfe?"

She sighed. "I guess. He was… a comforting presence in the background. And I thought he'd be around long enough for me to figure out if I really loved him, you know, in a big way."

The microwave pinged that our popcorn was ready, and I poured it in the bowl she had put on the counter. "Did he ask you to go with him?"

"Yeah." She walked into the living room, and threw herself down on the sofa.

I followed her in with the popcorn, and sat next to her. I put my feet next to hers on the coffee table. "What did you say?"

"I said I couldn't leave school, my work, everything here." She stared at her feet, even though she had socks on both of them and I didn't really see what there was to stare at for so long. "I guess I loved him enough that it's broken my heart, but not enough to give up my life here to go with him." She shifted her eyes sideways at me. "And don't give me that speech about how that's not love, that's sacrifice, blah, blah, blah."

I shook my head. "I don't give that speech anymore." I picked the joint up out of the ashtray, lit it, took a long hit, and passed it to Daphne.

She paused before taking it. "Good. Because it's bullshit."

I let out the smoke I'd been holding in my lungs. "I know."

The pizza came. We ate the whole thing and shared a soda that was in her refrigerator. We were watching television when I realized she was snoring on my shoulder. I turned off the TV with the remote, wrapped my arm around her so she could snuggle in a little more comfortably, and wiggled as carefully as I could until I got my cell phone out of my pocket.

"Hey." Brian sounded distracted, and I could hear music in the background.

"Are you at Babylon? Is something wrong?"

"If my being at Babylon means something's wrong, then clearly I have to reconsider the priorities of my life. But no, I'm at Woody's with Michael."

"All work and no play makes Brian… well, you could never be dull. I'll think of something perceptive to say when I'm less stoned." Daphne made a whoofling sound in her sleep, and I tried to lower my voice.

Brian laughed. "Are you consoling Daphne with drugs, alcohol, and junk food the way I taught you?"

"Worked like a charm. But now I'm stoned and she's asleep."

I heard a lot of noise in the background, and then Emmett's voice. "I'm here too, sweetie. Why don't you come join us?"

I laughed. "Did you just take Brian's phone away from him?"

"I had help. Michael distracted him for me."

I shook my head. "I'm at Daphne's. She broke up with her boyfriend and I got her drunk and stoned, and now she's asleep. But I can't drive."

The phone changed hands again. "I'll come get you." Brian sounded remarkably unruffled for a man whose phone had been stolen. Good. He needed to relax.

"Nah. I'm going to stay with Daph. Call me when you're going home." I closed my phone and put it next to me on the sofa. Daphne was snoring, her mouth open just a little. I put my cheek on her bouncy curls, and fell asleep.

**Brian's POV**

After I scooped Justin up from his comfort-fest at Daphne's, he slept pretty much the whole next day. Which was too bad, since I'd had other plans for my last Sunday home before spending most of the next week in LA working on the Costa Rica account.

I was leaving Tuesday, and Monday was nothing but meetings interspersed with long periods of aggravation. The renovations were done on the space next door, but the city hadn't given us the green light to move into it yet. We were crammed into the old offices, even though the new building was pristine and ready behind nothing more substantial than a tarp stretched across the archway between the two spaces.

An expensive, custom-made, reasonably attractive tarp, but still. A piece of fabric JR could have toddled through.

Ted, who apparently thought I didn't notice him creeping into my office, had placed a pile of papers on the corner of my desk and was trying to creep back out.

I waited until he had his hand on the door. "Theodore. When is that fucking city inspector going to sign off on this place? They can't get to Babylon fast enough if they think our cocktail napkins clash with the dancers' costumes. Why the fuck is this taking so long?"

He squared his shoulders and turned around. "Thursday. It's scheduled for Thursday, as it has been every Thursday for the last three weeks, only to be rescheduled at the last minute each and every time."

"Is there someone we can pay off? Get fired? Have killed? What the fuck's the holdup? It's been five months. It was supposed to be three. I had this place done in two."

Ted accepted his doom with a fair amount of grace and dignity, and walked back to the desk. "This place was nothing but surfaces and partitions. There weren't any structural changes."

We'd covered this before, so I just grunted and went back to my laptop. "Is someone going to bring me the boards for the Plessmont account?"

"Brian. Those are being handled. You've got to learn to let the people you hire to work for you, you know… work for you."

"I would," I observed, "if they didn't keep fucking it up."

"Maybe they would do a little better job if you weren't breathing down their necks all the time. I notice productivity in this place skyrockets when you're out of town."

I hid my smile at Ted's apparent passion for tracking the productivity stats of my company. "And quality goes down."

"Our close rate is identical on campaigns you sign off on personally, and those approved by Cynthia."

I hadn't known that. "Did you make that up?"

He shook his head. "Brian, you have to learn to delegate. Just a little. You let the manager at Babylon hire the bartenders and the DJs."

DJs were currently not a terribly popular subject at my house, but I didn't mention that. "Babylon is… different." I pulled the pile of papers Ted had dropped on the desk over to me. More things to sign.

He nodded. "I know. But the principle is the same."

I tapped my finger on the desk for a minute, then shook my head. I picked up my pen and started signing the lines neatly marked with little detachable red arrows that said "Sign here," as though I were unaware of what it normally meant when there was a blank line with my name typed under it. "Well, you'll have your opportunity the rest of the week to show me how much better Kinnetik does without me, while I'm trying to close a $1.3 million account that suddenly wants to be a $7.5 million account." I handed him the first signed document with a flourish.

Ted set it down on the desk. "I never suggested you delegate the trip to LA. Some things need the master's hand. But the Plessmont account isn't one of them."

I frowned at him, then went back to signing the papers. "You've become considerably more successful at obstructionism since you started living with a therapist."

"He's a drug counselor, not a therapist." He waited for me to sign the last one, then took the whole pile and went to the door. I was staring at my laptop when he turned just before he left the office. "And if there's one thing I've learned in all the years I've had the great good fortune to work for you, Brian… I need any edge I can get."

A few hours later, I was stuck in traffic and halfway home when Justin called. "Where are you?"

I glanced at the exit, and told him. "I'll be there in 10 minutes." A smattering of raindrops hit the Corvette's windshield. "Fifteen, tops."

"Okay. Later." Then he hung up.

It was pissing down rain when I got there. When I finally pulled in the garage, the sound of water streaming onto the roof of the car cut out suddenly.

I went into the house, and looked for Justin. His studio was dark. I found him out in the hot tub. His head was lying back against the edge, and I almost thought he was asleep. But when I looked down at him, he opened his eyes and smiled at me. I knelt behind him, on an impulse, and kissed him, my arms slipping around his neck, reaching for his cock in the hot water.

He laughed against my mouth. “Brian! You’re getting your shirt all wet. You’re going to ruin it.”

I just kept kissing him. I didn’t care about my shirt. I closed my hand on his cock and felt it starting to get hard, and reached in a little farther with my other hand, and cupped his balls.

Justin knelt up and turned around, and I pulled him out of the water and over the edge of the spa. He’d lost his concern about my shirt, and pressed his dripping body against me. He felt hot and wet through my clothes. His hands were frantically opening my belt while I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and yanked it off over my head. I pulled him close and kissed him, while we both got the rest of my clothes off.

I felt the spa edge behind my knees, and Justin's hands gripping the backs of my thighs while he knelt in front of me. Everything was feeling like water, his wet hands on my skin, the rain on the glass roof, the spa bubbling behind me. And his mouth was like water on my cock, swirling and lapping, until I overflowed into him, my fingers tight in his hair.

**Justin's POV**

Brian was lying in the hot water, his eyes closed. I was sitting on the edge of the spa, and he had one hand wrapped loosely around my ankle.

I leaned down and kissed his face. "Don’t fall asleep in there."

He turned his face up to me and opened his eyes. "You're eating ice cream."

I dug another spoonful out of the carton and nodded. "Ummm hmmm." I held it out to him temptingly, and he shook his head. I laughed and ran the dripping spoon over his lips, but he let it run down his chin into the hot water. "Oh my god, you're afraid of a little vanilla ice cream."

He heaved himself up, and stood there, water running in rivulets down his body. I looked at him, the spoon forgotten in my hand.

When I glanced at his face, his smile was predatory. I didn't think it was for the ice cream. But he just asked, "When did you get that?"

"When you were passed out from the blowjob I gave you." I may have sounded slightly smug.

He stepped out of the spa, and shook his wet hair. He ignored the pile of towels on the bench, and walked over to the table, where there was another spoon. He sat down and looked at me. I laughed and followed him, and handed him the carton.

When it was half-empty, I pushed it away. I stood up and straddled his lap, facing him. "Know what I want?" I put sticky kisses on his forehead.

He wrinkled his face at me. "What?"

"I want you to fuck me four times tonight. Once for every night you're going to be away." Then I blinked at him. Very slowly.

The predatory smile was back, but just for a second. "Did the blowjob count as one?"

I considered. "No. Not unless you blow me, too. It counts as half."

"So if you blow me again, that's one?"

I wriggled my ass onto his dick, which had been getting hard during the whole conversation. "In your dreams."

"Ah, my dreams. Unlike your dreams, blond boy? Where you get fucked four times between now and tomorrow morning?"

I leaned down and put my mouth right at his ear. "Are you objecting?" I ground down on his cock one more time, and he gasped.

"No." Then he reached up and grabbed the sides of my face, and kissed me. His mouth was still sweet and sticky from the ice cream, and I kissed him until it wasn't anymore, until it tasted just like Brian. I ran my hands over his shoulders and upper arms, and then over his back, feeling his shoulder blades moving under my fingers.

I trailed my hand down his right arm, and gently unfolded it so it was stretched down next to us on the chair. And then I very carefully let his wrist brush against the restraints I'd fastened to the bar that ran around the back of the seat.

He knew what it was the minute he felt it, and his eyes locked onto mine. This was always a tricky moment with Brian, but I just looked at him. And blinked again. "Tell me to do it."

He licked his lips, then folded his bottom one in for just a second. But he didn't say anything.

I moved on his lap again, lifting up a little with my thighs, and feeling his dick shift until it was riding up between us, brushing against mine. "Say it."

He stared a little longer, and then, almost imperceptibly, nodded. "Okay."

I gently wrapped the restraint around his left wrist, making sure it wasn't too tight. Then I leaned down the other side, and moved his right wrist down and fastened it. He briefly strained against them both, and arched his groin up into mine.

I reached across the table, and slipped the lube out from between the folds of a towel.

He was watching me with his eyes half-hooded, but I could tell from his breathing he was more turned on than he'd have been willing to admit. "I seem to have been passed out a little longer than I realized."

I smiled. "I had this out here before you even got home."

He gave a short laugh, and I leaned down and kissed him again, working the lube onto both our cocks where they were crushed between our stomachs. I could see the ridges in his abdomen, and I rubbed the wet head of my cock against them before I wrapped both our cocks in my palm and started to slowly jerk them together.

Brian tipped his head back, his eyes closed, and I watched him while I moved my hand, our wet cocks sliding back and forth inside my curved fingers. He gave a jerk, and I got the lube again, and started to finger it inside my ass. He was watching me, and for just a second, I saw that smile again. Only Brian could look like a predator when he was cuffed to a chair, I thought. Then I lifted myself over his cock, holding it in my hand.

I put the head inside me, keeping it right there, the widest part of him at the tightest part of me, and just let myself feel it. He tried to push up, but I raised myself on my legs and didn't let him. He couldn't grip my hips, and groaned in frustration. I pressed my hands onto his shoulders, holding him as still as I could, and just stayed there.

It hurt, but it felt good at the same time. I wanted him deeper inside me, but that stretch, that peculiar, painful, cramping feeling as my muscles fought the intrusion, distracted me. I squeezed around the head of his cock, and he froze under me. "Jesus fuck, Justin."

I slid down a little more, feeling the head move past the opening and my ass tighten on his shaft. He groaned again, and I let myself settle down on him slowly and steadily, until I was sitting on his dick. I looked into his eyes, smiled, and lifted my feet off the floor, taking him as deep as I could.

He had thrown his head back again, every muscle in his arms and neck and shoulders straining, wet with water and my kisses and sweat. I could see his hands grabbing at the sides of the chair, the restraints pulling as he yanked against them. I put my feet flat on the ground, lifting up until nothing was inside me but the head, and rammed myself down again.

This time I gave a cry, as his cock dragged across my prostate. I kept my grip firm on his shoulders, and did it again, and then again, working his cock inside me. I rotated my hips a little on the down thrust, and we both moaned at that one. I couldn't hold his shoulders anymore, just wrapped my arms tight around his neck and rode him. He was kissing my shoulders, biting at my upper arm, and I pressed my cheek hard against his hair, my feet flat on the ground, pushing up, my thighs burning as I lowered myself down.

Brian's arms jerked against the restraints again, and I let my hands trace the straining muscles, running up and down his upper arms, then over his shoulders. Rocking myself on his cock, rubbing myself on him from the inside, rolling it over and over my prostate, while I felt him going rigid underneath me and inside me at the same time.

I knew he was close to coming because he was so fucking hard, because he groaned my name, because he was covered in sweat. And so was I, rocking my hips on him without really pulling off, feeling the burn inside start to spread out towards my balls. I pulled one hand off of him and jerked on my cock, and it just took one pull, and then another, until the burn exploded, expanding suddenly from that one spot I'd been riding out to every part of me. It was like a flash flood, to my stomach and face, down my legs, out my arms. I gripped him tight with my ass, and he was coming, too, his legs braced on the floor, his thighs pressing up against the backs of mine, every muscle locked and hard.

Before he was even finished coming, while my ass was still spasming on his cock, I reached down and slipped my fingers under the velcro restraint on his left wrist. The minute his arm was free he had it wrapped around my back, his fingers digging into my skin. His right arm was next, holding me tightly across my back, my arms around his neck. I wrapped my legs around him as he stood up. I was really too heavy for this, but he didn't even know. He just laid me down on the floor, his cock still inside me, my legs still wound around his waist.

And he kissed me, his hands up behind me, buried in my hair. He kissed me for a long time, and I felt his cock, which had never really gotten soft, start to get hard inside me again.

I would never, ever get used to that, to his cock thickening and filling while it was still inside me, and I was still wet from his come, and loose from his fuck. I held onto him and let him bite me and fuck me, and we finally shuddered into some kind of burning hot, almost painful, orgasm together, before I let my legs drop from around his waist and just lay there, exhausted.

**Brian's POV**

I was lying across Justin on the floor between the spa and the table. "Was that one, or two?"

Justin brushed his hand across my shoulder. "I think it was more like… ten."

I laughed, and nuzzled his hair. My cock had slipped out of his ass, and I gently untangled our legs and knelt next to him. I held out my hand and tugged him with me while I stood up, then wrapped him in my arms. "Then my work here is done."

He was too fucked-out to do more than smile against my bare skin. Justin was so easy. A little dick, a little ice cream, two mind-blowing orgasms, and he was pliant and sleepy as a kitten.

"Do you suppose we have anything more life-sustaining than ice cream in the kitchen?" It was too late to order delivery here in the wilds of elite suburbia.

He still seemed dazed, but nodded. "I think so. Something. Eggs, maybe."

I almost made coffee with the high tech coffeemaker Justin had gotten me last Christmas. It ground the beans, made the coffee, and frothed the milk for a latte. It did everything except warm my Corvette up in the garage while I made the coffee. But I settled for a beer and a couple of aspirin, since I had a feeling my neck and shoulder muscles were going to hurt like hell when the endorphins wore off.

Justin was back to himself enough to bitch at me for making him scrambled egg whites, but he ate them. He went upstairs while I put the dishes in the dishwasher, and when I got to the bedroom, he was sound asleep, one leg sticking out from the covers.

I packed quietly for my trip, then sat on the edge of the bed, looking at him. He stirred a little, and opened his eyes. "Hey."

I climbed under the covers, and he rolled over so his head was on my shoulder. I looked at him. "Do you need to get up in the morning?"

He shook his head. "I'm having lunch with Michael to decide on the cover for the new issue, and then stopping by Lindsay's office to pick up some reviews of the Boston show she saved for me. So don't wake me up."

"I'll try to be quiet, since you're such a light sleeper." I felt his foot make a feeble kick at my ankle, but he was pretty much asleep before he made contact.

He was still sleeping, his lips parted and a tiny bit of drool in the corner of his mouth, when the alarm went off at 5:45. I tugged at his hair, and he licked his lips, wrinkled his nose, and opened his eyes. He looked dazed, then slightly irritated. "Mwrgrrrh."

"I thought you might want to make coffee while I shower." I waited for comprehension, and when it came, he snorted, still only half-awake.

"Dream on."

I leaned down, trailed my lips slowly over his, and nuzzled into his neck. "Coffee."

He wound his arms around my neck and pulled me closer. "Fuck me first."

I laughed, and almost asked if he didn't get enough the night before, when I remembered who I was talking to. "I don't have time."

He whispered huskily against my hear, "Don't you want to get on your plane thinking about me lying here, warm and freshly fucked, and full of your come?"

It made my dick twitch, but I shook my head. "I'd rather think of you making coffee while I take a shower."

I dodged the thrown pillow, and laughed as I went into the bathroom.

And I made my own coffee before I left.

______________________

I hadn't been in LA since Justin's and my layover on the way home from Costa Rica in February. A layover I'd expected to spend in the duty free shop, but had instead spent up Justin's ass in the men's room – an activity I'd have thought I'd had enough of in Costa Rica, but as Justin had proven to me again and again, sometimes there really was no such thing as enough.

He'd spent our last drunken night there waxing sentimental about this being the honeymoon we'd never had, and I pointed out sensibly that we'd never had a wedding, either. He just petted my hair and assured me he understood.

I saw my driver at the curb, and got in the back of the car. I was leaving a trendy LA restaurant after a four-hour lunch meeting with Eric Rohan and the investors tied to the resort and retirement project in Costa Rica. The scope of what they were proposing to do had surprised even me. Eric started naming figures far in excess of what we'd originally discussed for acquiring the 120 acres adjacent to the land they currently owned, and remodeling the current property. I didn't blink, though, especially since all that came with a hefty increase in the budget for their marketing campaign.

We had another meeting set for the next day, on the grounds of the Palm Springs resort Eric's company owned, but the rest of the night was mine. As the car crawled through rush hour traffic, I found myself wishing I had something better to do than spend it with a cell phone clutched to one ear and Ted on the other end, while we hashed out figures and projections on our networked laptops. I was wondering if his and Cynthia's occasional suggestions that I learn to delegate weren't completely unwarranted, when my cell phone rang.

I glanced in surprise at the number; it was Jennifer Taylor.

"Brian?"

There was something in her voice that told me she wasn't calling about opportunities in the Pittsburgh commercial real estate market. I don't really know how I knew. I just did. "What's wrong?"

"Justin's ill. I'm at the house waiting for an ambulance. I can't wake him up. When did you talk to him last?"

I didn't answer her. There was absolutely no way I could make my throat open enough to get a sound out.

"Brian." Her voice was sharp.

"Last night. He had a headache." It was just a headache, he'd said. He'd laughed about it.

"They're here. I'll call you the minute I know anything."

"I'm on my way to the airport."

She hung up. I sat there for a while, the open phone in my hand, then leaned forward. "Can you take me to LAX?"

The driver nodded, and didn't ask any questions. I'm sure I must have signed something, paid him. But I don't really remember anything about getting to the airport. I know I was very polite and careful with the woman at the airline ticket counter. I remember smiling at her and handing her my credit card, and I remember something inside my head trying to escape my control. I knew if it did, I wouldn't be getting on a plane, and I had to get on the plane, so I just kept a ruthless grip on it.

Jennifer called while I was in line for security. My cell phone was in my hand, but it took me a minute to remember how to answer it. She told me what hospital they were at – one near our house, where I'd never been. "They had to go to the nearest one."

I nodded. I didn't say anything.

"Brian?" That sharp voice again.

"I'm at the airport. I'll come straight there."

"Do you have a medical power of attorney, anything like that?" Her voice was softer. "He's unconscious."

I tried to think. "In the safe."

"That's not very practical. Can you get your attorney to courier copies over here?" She hesitated. "You might need them."

I let the white noise get a little louder. "Okay." I should have said something encouraging. I just hung up and tried to think of who my lawyer was. I couldn't, so I called Ted.

"Brian, are you…"

"Justin's in the hospital and I need you to call my lawyer. Tell him to call me on this number. I'm at the airport. I need him to call me in the next five minutes. I'm getting on a plane."

"What's wrong with…"

I hung up.

I went through security. I stood there waiting for my phone to come out of the scanner. Outside I was perfectly calm.

I looked at the screen when I picked the phone up. No one had called.

I put my jacket and shoes back on. I took my phone and kept walking towards the gate. I felt it ring before I heard it. I told the attorney to send a copy of Justin's medical power of attorney over to the hospital.

Then I waited for the plane.


	2. Beliefs, Chapter 2

  
  


**Beliefs, Chapter Two**  
By Xie

" _To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting_.”  
\- Stanislaus of Poland

**Michael's POV**

I was at the store, laughing and ringing up a sale for three kids and keeping an eye on the desperate but broke collector hovering near a rack by the door, when my cell phone rang. It was my mom, and I didn't listen all that closely to what she was saying at first.

And then I did. "Mom. Mom, wait, what? Start over." But it didn't change the second time she said it. Justin was in the hospital, and he was unconscious. And that's all anyone knew.

The guy near the door was gone, probably with something stuffed under his jacket, but I didn't care. I hung up the phone and followed my customers to the door, turning the sign to "Closed."

Brian's phone rolled to voice mail, so I punched in another number.

"Ted? Did you talk to Brian? Do you know anything about Justin?"

He sounded distracted. "I'm on my way to LA to pick up the meeting Brian's missing tomorrow because he's on his way back here." I heard a car door slam. "I called Jennifer, but I just got voice mail. I don't even know what hospital he's in."

I told him; it was some small suburban one near Brian and Justin's house. "When will Brian get in?"

I heard him fumbling with the phone. "I don't know. I don't know anything except that there's a very, very important client sitting in LA expecting Brian Kinney in the morning, and he's going to get me. Call me when you find out what's going on."

Ben was in New York at a conference, so I left a message on his voice mail while I drove to the hospital. I pulled the car into a space next to a manicured flowerbed, and followed a winding path to the main entrance. It was quiet inside, and cool. An elderly woman in a navy blue cardigan obligingly looked up Justin's name, and sent me to a waiting area on the sixth floor.

My mother was there, sitting next to Jennifer on an overstuffed sofa. I dropped down next to my mom, and reached across her to put my hand on Jennifer's knee. "What's going on?"

Jennifer was shredding a tissue in her hand. "We were supposed to have lunch, and he didn't show up. Or call. And he didn't answer his phone. So I drove out to the house." She was digging her nails into her palm, and my mom wrapped Jennifer's hands in hers. "He was… just lying on the floor next to his bed. I couldn't wake him up."

Jennifer took a deep breath, and my mother murmured something, then turned and looked at me. "They're doing some tests."

This was territory I knew something about. "What kind of tests?"

Jennifer looked up. "Blood work and a CT scan."

"Did you talk to Brian?"

She nodded. "He's on his way. I told him to come straight here. But I don't know when…"

I looked around the waiting area, and there were no signs warning of dire penalties for using a cell phone in the hospital. But when I tried Brian's number again, it still just went to voice mail. And this time, so did Ted's.

I looked at Jennifer. "How did Brian sound?"

She didn't look at me right away, but finally her eyes focused on my face. "Like nothing."

My mom and I looked at each other, but neither one of us said anything.

**Brian's POV**

You'd think that plane ride was something I'd never forget, but the truth is, I don't remember it.

The only memory I have is of staring at the screen on my cell phone for a few minutes after the flight attendant announced we had to turn them off. I was wondering what would happen if I went into the bathroom and used it. Was there an electronics detector, like the smoke detector?

After we landed, the guy in the seat next to me handed me my briefcase while I stood in the aisle. I looked at it for a minute, not knowing what it was. But I thanked him.

When I got to the hospital, though, everything changed. It was like swimming underwater. One minute it's just the pounding of your own heart in your ears, and then you break the surface. Everything was loud, and even though it was dark out, the light in the parking lot hurt my eyes.

I'd only gotten Jennifer's voice mail when I called from the airport, but she answered when I tried again as I walked in the hospital doors. "I'm here."

She sounded calm, but didn't say, "He's fine." She just told me to come to the sixth floor.

Michael was standing outside the elevator when I got off. Maybe I should have been surprised, given that it was the middle of the night. But I wasn't. He wrapped his arm around my waist, and tugged me down the hall. All he said was, "Come on. They're down here."

It was a short walk down the hallway to a door marked "Family Waiting Area." Michael said he was going to make sure the doctor knew I was there, and I went in alone. Jennifer was sitting with Debbie, but she stood up and walked right into my arms. I held her for a second, and then gripped her shoulders. "What's going on? What happened?"

She took a deep breath. "He didn't show up for lunch today. He didn't answer his phone, or his email. So I drove out to the house." She bit her lip. "He didn't answer the door, but I had the key you gave me when you had the new table delivered."

I interrupted her. "Jennifer."

She took another breath. "He was upstairs, lying on the floor next to the bed. He'd thrown up all over himself. I couldn't wake him up. He was burning up with fever. I called 911. I called you. I let the EMTs in. I came here."

"Mrs. Taylor?" It was a woman in surgical scrubs, Michael behind her. "The doctor said the two of you can come back, and he can talk to you."

We left Michael and Debbie, and followed the nurse down the hall, through a set of doors marked "Visitors must register." A man in a white lab coat glanced at us, and nodded at Jennifer, who introduced me as Justin's partner.

I shook his hand, and he didn't look me in the eye. I didn't give a fuck if he was the biggest homophobic prick in the universe, if he could tell me what was wrong with Justin and fix it. So I just gave him my most sincere look of concern and said, "I just got in. Can you tell me what's going on?"

He nodded. "Mrs. Taylor, does your son go to the University of Pittsburgh?"

Jennifer looked confused. "No. No, he doesn't…"

I interrupted her. "His best friend does."

"Has he seen him recently?"

"Her. Yes. Saturday night."

"And is she ill?"

I had no idea, but I pulled out my cell phone and punched in her number. It just went to voice mail.

While I was dialing, Jennifer asked him, "I don't understand. Why are you asking about Pitt?"

I snapped the phone shut and looked at him, and he frowned. "There's an outbreak of bacterial meningitis in two of the dorms at the University of Pittsburgh. One student died before anyone realized what she had. With your son's age, and if he's been in close contact with students from the university…"

I kept looking at him. Part of my mind had frozen on that word… "died"… and another part was calmly separating itself from the other. "What's next, then?"

"We did a CT scan when he came in, and when his mother said he had a prior brain trauma and some neurological damage, we contacted his neurologist. We have his medical records. We suspected he had bacterial meningitis, and started him on antibiotics and steroids. We've done a lumbar puncture to confirm that diagnosis, and now we just have to wait."

I asked him a few questions, but the frozen part of my brain kept trying to take over, and I had to concentrate to follow his answers. He kept looking at Jennifer instead of at me, but she finally shook her head and told him I had Justin's medical power of attorney. She tried to hand him an envelope, but he told her to give it to someone else. I wasn't sure, because I couldn't hear anymore.

I shook my head, and everything got bright and loud again. I closed my eyes, then opened them. "I want to see him."

They took me through a set of doors, then wrapped me up in a gown and mask and gloves, and even safety glasses. They were all wearing them, too, and there were red signs and warnings everywhere.

I went through the second door, and he was lying there looking nothing at all like he was sleeping, or at least, not like any kind of peaceful sleep. There was a crease between his brows, and his lips were dry. It was a little like just before he had a nightmare, but his eyes weren't moving under his lids.

I wanted to push off the glasses and mask, put my face down next to his. Considering all the ways I'd touched him in the last few days, it seemed ridiculous now to put all these barriers between us. But I just put my hand, in its latex glove, on his arm, and felt my lips turning inward under the mask.

A nurse asked me to step out for a minute, and started asking me a lot of questions about contact with Justin. It took me a few minutes to follow what she was asking. "I kissed him, shared a beer bottle with him, shared a joint with him, sucked him off, and fucked him. Is that the kind of contact you mean?"

She looked at me for a minute. I wondered if she'd just get up and walk out, but finally her lips flickered into something that was almost a smile, and she said, "Yes."

They made me take antibiotics, and grilled me on who Justin had seen in the last few days. I tried Daphne again, and gave them her name and number when her voice mail picked up. I knew what street she lived on, but couldn't remember the exact address.

I had stripped off the protective crap, and they said I could go back to the waiting area. Jennifer was there, and Michael. "Carl came and got my mom," he said, as if it wasn't four in the morning. As if she should have stayed there all night.

Michael got me to sit down. They came in and asked us a few more questions. They kept asking Jennifer, and she'd make them repeat it for me. I said I'd talked to him the night before. He had a headache but he'd seemed fine. He'd laughed, I told them. I could remember him laughing.

And then they went away, and I went back to waiting.  
 **  
Michael's POV**

I stayed all night at the hospital with Brian. They wouldn't let me go in to see Justin, so I spent a lot of time sitting on a bench in the hallway while Brian sat with him. Jennifer stayed until it got light out, and then went home to eat and sleep.

But Brian didn't, so I didn't.

It wasn't because he asked me to stay. If you want the honest truth, I think sometimes he forgot I was there. He'd blink at me when he came out of Justin's room to let them do whatever they needed to do, or when he had to use the bathroom.

I stayed anyway. Ben was on his way home, but wasn't back yet, and Hunter had said he'd open the store in the morning.

In the beginning, when Ben was sick, I'd had to learn how to cope with the medical machine, to get the nurses and doctors on my side, to get them to answer my questions. But Brian? He never let the doctors get away with anything. He called Justin's neurologist the minute her office opened, and asked her if Justin needed a different hospital, needed to see her, needed the Mayo Clinic, needed a specialist flown in from London.

I don't think he liked it when she said all Justin needed was antibiotics and time. Because Brian couldn't buy those things.

They'd given me the same antibiotics they'd given Brian, because Justin and I had lunch before he got sick. I couldn't really remember if we'd shared anything to eat or drink. Who remembers that kind of thing? I'd felt a moment's panic for Ben, but he'd been at a conference in New York for the last few days.

I woke up in the chair in the hall, Brian's hand shaking my shoulder. "You should go home. Get some rest."

I put my hand over his. "What about you?"

He almost laughed. "Do you fucking think I could sleep?"

I shook my head. I remembered what it took to even close my eyes, when Ben was sick. "You could shower, change, eat. I'll stay here."

"Maybe later. You go home now. I'll be fine."

I almost told him he wasn't fine and he wasn't going to be fine, but I shut up. Jennifer would probably be back soon, and I'd go home and get some sleep then.

Brian was just about to go back into Justin's room when my cell phone rang. He had his turned off. It was Jennifer, so I handed it to him, and a few minutes later he handed it back to me and just leaned back against the wall, like he suddenly realized how tired he was.

Jennifer's voice was thick, and I knew she'd been crying. She told me what she'd just told Brian, that Daphne was unconscious and in critical condition at Allegheny General.

I stood in the hall behind Brian, and put both my hands on the back of his shoulders. He turned around, and I let him almost strangle me, his chin digging painfully into the top of my head. I wanted to tell him everything would be okay, but I could hear Hunter's voice in my head, reminding me that there was no way I could know that.

I pushed away from him, and took a long look at his face. He looked half-blank and half-terrified, and I knew from experience, that was a bad place to let Brian stay. So I took a deep breath, gripped hard on his shoulders, and said the one thing I thought might penetrate whatever wall he was behind: "Brian, whatever happens, right now he needs you."

He blinked, then blinked again. I saw a lot of things in his eyes, and his teeth were biting into his lower lip, but he finally took in one long, shuddering breath, and nodded. His eyes didn't look normal, but they looked more or less like Brian again, so I let go, and gave him a gentle shove towards Justin's room. He looked at me over his shoulder just before the door closed, and I gave him a small nod.

And then I sat down on my hard little chair in the hall, and I cried. Wasn't it bad enough I lay awake at night, listening to Ben breathing, and trying to get all the nightmare scenarios out of my brain so I could sleep? Or that every time Hunter had a cold, or a headache, I had him dead and buried before he turned 21? But sometimes it felt like every time I turned around, someone I thought was safe – wasn't.

Once Jennifer got there, I went home to get some sleep so I could go back that night. I barely made it up the few stairs to the porch; getting up to the bedroom was overwhelming, so I fell asleep on the sofa. Ben would wake me up when he got home, I thought. And then I'd go upstairs.

It was dark when I smelled something good, and felt a warm hand on my arm. Ben was sitting next to me, and there was a bowl of soup, steam rising off it, on the coffee table.

I sat up, and leaned my face against his chest for a minute.

He wrapped both his arms around me, and kissed my head. "I just talked to Lindsay. She said Justin's the same, but that's normal at this point. I thought you'd want to go back, so I made you some dinner."

I took the bowl, and blew on a spoonful. "Did she say how Brian is?"

He hesitated. "She said he's not so good."

I started to put the bowl down, but he stopped me. "Eat something and shower, and then I'll take you back."

When I carried the bowl into the kitchen, I glanced down at Ben's laptop on the dining room table. It was open to a website about bacterial meningitis.

I called Ted from the car while Ben drove. "Have you talked to Brian?"

"Nothing. I couldn't get Jennifer, either. How's Justin?

I told him what I knew, and then he asked me how Brian was. "I don't know. He probably won't ask, but how did the meeting go?"

"Eric had met Justin when he was out in Pittsburgh last year, so he was very concerned. I think we're okay there. As if Brian would give a fuck anyway. But that's what he has me for. To give a fuck when he can't." Ted paused. "Just tell him everything's under control and not to worry."

I stared out the window after I hung up the phone. Ben wasn't saying anything, just driving. It had started to rain while I was sleeping, and the lights from the cars in front of us splintered into pinpoints through the windshield.

Ben kept his arm around my shoulder while we walked from the parking lot to the hospital. "I read up on this meningitis outbreak while you were asleep."

I glanced at him, wondering why he hadn't said anything. "Yeah?"

"Another student died this morning."

I stopped walking, ignoring the rain. "Fuck. I wonder if he knows?"

When we got to the sixth floor, I stopped at the family waiting area. There were more people tonight, an elderly man and woman sitting together, not talking. Emmett and Debbie were sitting on either side of Jennifer, and she was crying on Debbie's shoulder.

Ben was frowning, and I leaned down and kissed my mother. "What's going on? Is there any change?"

Jennifer shook her head and wiped her eyes, but she didn't answer.

My mom patted Jennifer's shoulder. "Daphne's mother called. Another student at Pitt died this afternoon."

"Yeah, Ben saw that on the web." I sat down. "Does Brian know?"

Emmett looked worried. "Not yet. He hasn't come out of Justin's room, and they won't let anyone back there except Jennifer."

Ben took a seat next to me. "From what Michael told me, he'd only gotten sick a few hours before. If you start aggressive treatment immediately, adults nearly always recover completely."

Jennifer gave him a watery smile. "Sometimes I find it hard to think of Justin as an adult."

Debbie snorted. "Trust me, that comes with the territory. Even when your kids have kids of their own, they're still kids."

Ben's arm tightened on me, then let me go. "You should go see Brian."

"If they let me go back there."

Jennifer came with me, and no one said anything when we pushed through the double doors into the restricted area. Justin's room looked the same, the warning signs still in place. A nurse came out, and before the door swung shut, I saw a glimpse of Brian, sitting in a chair next to Justin's bed.

They'd said that after Justin had been on therapy for 24 hours, I could go in his room, so I tried to get Brian to go home and get some sleep. I swore I'd sit right next to Justin until he got back, but he didn't even answer me.

I called Lindsay, because she could always get Brian to do shit he didn't want to do. She came to the hospital, and Brian let me sit with Justin while he went and sat with her in the waiting area after she came. But nothing changed, and after a little while, he came back, and I had to go out into the hall again. There was only one chair in Justin's room, and too many machines to fit another one in there.

Jennifer had gone home to sleep and wasn't back yet, so I waited there in the hallway. I was asleep with my head against the wall when there was a flurry of activity in Justin's room, and I watched the worried faces of the medical staff as they came and went. They made Brian leave for a few minutes, and he said Justin's blood pressure was too low.

Justin's doctor came out of the room with another doctor. Neither of them looked at me, just at Brian. Justin's regular doctor spoke first. "Brian, this is the infectious diseases specialist I told you about, Dr. Kohler. She'd like to add some medication to bring Justin's blood pressure up."

Brian's hands were in fists, and I didn't really think he'd hit anyone, but I stayed close. "Does this mean his therapy isn't working?'

Dr. Kohler shook her head. She was a lot older than the other doctors, and she looked right at Brian when she answered his question. I didn't really listen to what she said, just kept an eye on Brian's face.

They finally went back into Justin's room, and Brian sat down, hard, on one of the chairs in the hall. I sat next to him and held his hand.

"Assholes," he said. "Useless shits."

I knew exactly how he felt. I didn't argue with him. "You should call Jennifer and tell her what's going on."

He looked at me like I wasn't speaking English, but after a minute his eyes got less confused, and he nodded.

I was still holding his hand, so I let go of it. "Do you want me to call her?"

He shook his head. "I'll do it." He took a long breath, and then he pulled out his phone. I listened to his voice; it was like he was talking about a stranger, to a stranger.

He sat there after he hung up. "She's coming." But he just stared at the floor, and after everyone came out of Justin's room, I went in there.

I saw the rash on his hands and arms. They'd said it was from the bacteria spreading under his skin. I ignored the IVs and machines, just like I always ignored Ben's, and sat down next to him as carefully as I could. I stared at Justin's face, but I didn't say anything. They say sometimes people in comas can hear what you say, but I was pretty sure he already knew Brian needed him to get better, and my telling him wasn't going to help him get well.

I heard a sound at the door, and turned my head.

It was Brian. "I keep thinking there has to be something else we can do."

I nodded. "I know. We've watched too many medical TV shows. No one ever just sits and waits in those, but that's mostly what you do in hospitals."

He snorted, and he almost sounded like himself, just for a second. "God, I hate hospitals."

I looked back at Justin's pale face, and the red marks on his skin, and his chapped lips. "Me, too."

**Brian's POV**

After Justin had been in the hospital for a day and a half, I realized Michael was planning on staying with me all night again. I told him to go the fuck home.

He crossed his arms over his chest. "You're not the only one who cares about Justin, you know."

I closed my eyes for a second. "Then come during the day, like everyone else."

"Then go home and get some sleep during the day, and I will."

I didn't have the strength to argue with him. I just shook my head.

Everyone came that day, Lindsay and Mel, Debbie, Emmett, even Ted, who'd just gotten back from LA. I didn't see anyone but Lindsay, who made Jennifer drag me out so she could try one more time to get me to go home and sleep. "Brian… Justin knows you're here." She was holding my hands.

"Which, if I go home to sleep, will no longer be the case."

I thought I was being perfectly logical, but realized ten seconds too late that I'd just confirmed whatever it was she already believed. I was too tired to explain anything to her, and this psychotherapy session was eating up what little energy I had. Energy I needed for other things.

Jennifer, on the other hand, never once tried to get me to go home. She barely left for six hours at a time. She said Molly was at her father's, and I caught myself wondering, with a weird detached part of my brain, what Justin would have thought if he'd heard that.

The doctors kept telling me that the 48 hours after starting treatment were the most critical, and that after that, we'd have a better idea of where we stood. After Lindsay left, I sat down next to Justin again. He seemed restless, even though his eyes were closed. He was squeezing them shut, though, and I wondered if he was awake.

I couldn't understand why they said he was unconscious, because he sometimes opened his eyes, and then closed them tight. Like every light, or sound, or movement in the room, hurt him. I watched him, his head not moving, his neck stiff, his legs jerking under the thin blanket.

One of the nurses came in, and very gently tried to check his blood pressure, but he struck out with his arm and knocked her hands away. When she tried again, he sat up, his eyes still shut tightly, and started tearing out the IV in his left hand.

I said his name, "Justin," and he didn't seem to hear it, or care. He was crying, and starting to rip out the other IV. The nurse must have hit a call button of some kind, because a monitor started beeping and in a minute, two nurses came in. One of them asked me to move, and I went and stood by the door, watching them try to get Justin to lie down, to stop fighting them.

They had to strap his wrists to the sides of the bed before he stopped.

When they got his IVs back in, the first nurse, Julie, turned to where I was standing. "Could you step outside for a minute, Brian? I'm going to get the doctor on call."

Her voice sounded calm, but I didn't want to leave the room. I just shook my head. "I'll wait until the doctor gets here."

She went back to Justin, and took his blood pressure and temperature. He seemed to really be asleep or unconscious now.

When she was done, she didn't leave, just stood writing in Justin's chart and looking at the monitors. I sat next to him, wishing I could brush back his hair or hold his hand without him flinching. Wishing there was something I could do.

I felt the air move, and knew someone had come in the door, but I didn't turn my head until I felt a hand on my shoulder. "Mr. Kinney?"

I got up, and let the doctor, Kohler, the infectious disease doc, examine Justin. She looked at his chart, and then asked me to step outside in a firm voice.

I didn't want to step into that hall. Didn't want to have Michael ask me what was going on. Especially because I didn't know. So I just stood by the door again, watching, trying to stay out of the way. Finally, she said something in a low voice to Julie, and steered me out into the hall by my elbow.

When we got out into the bright corridor, I pulled my arm away from her. It was the closest I'd come to losing it since this had all started. "What the fuck is going on?" I tried to get my voice under some kind of control. "Shouldn't he be getting better with all these drugs? Not worse?"

"It's the bacteria dying," she said. "They release a toxin, and that's what's causing this."

I took a breath, and listened to what she was telling me. "This," it turned out, was half the organs in his body deciding they'd had enough. They wanted to put him on a respirator to help him breathe, and in a coma with drugs so he'd let the respirator breathe for him, without fighting it.

I told them to do it, just do it. Michael was right behind me, but he didn't touch me. I think I might have hit him if he had.

They had to move Justin to a different room, one with more machines and more nurses and doctors. More lights. More noise. But they'd drugged him unconscious, and he didn't flinch or open his eyes anymore when anyone touched him. So at least I could hold his hand.


	3. Beliefs, Chapter 3

  
  


**Beliefs, Chapter Three**  
By Xie

" _The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen_."  
\- Frank Lloyd Wright

**Justin's POV**

I tried not to open my eyes. I didn't know where I was, or who was there. I just knew the light hurt me inside my head, in places I didn't know could hurt. Twice I thought I heard Brian saying my name, but when I opened my eyes, all I saw were jagged shapes that cut into me. And everything was white and loud and sharp, so I'd try to shut it out again.

But this time, the voice wouldn't go away. It was a man's voice saying my name, but it wasn't Brian. I ignored him, and he just kept saying it over and over: "Justin. Justin."

I tried to push him away, but I couldn't move my hand. I focused on that, why my hand didn't work, and felt something like ice slide over my brain and skin. My hand.

I opened my eyes.

Nothing made any sense. There was a strange man staring down at me, and I felt my heart start hammering. And then I remembered my hand, and I tried to turn my head to look. And there, that was the pain, god, the worst pain I'd ever felt. And closing my eyes didn't stop it, nothing stopped it.

I felt tears leaking out of my eyes, and I thought one more time about my hand, and how I couldn't move it. And then I shut everything as far away as I could.  
 **  
Brian's POV**

The doctor who had tried to get Justin to open his eyes stepped back, and was talking quietly with Dr. Kohler. It felt like every fucking doctor in the hospital had been there; Justin's original doctor, a neurologist, and Kohler, who seemed to be the one in charge now.

I'd finally broken down and gone home. I'd showered and slept and recharged my cell phone. The bed wasn't made and the room smelled bad. I'd told someone to make sure the housekeepers didn't go into the bedroom or bathroom until I'd cleaned them. I looked around the room, thinking about Justin lying on the floor in his puke.

I thought I'd go sleep in one of the other seven bedrooms, but at the last minute I lay down in our bed, and slept all night and most of the morning.

I woke up with my heart pounding. I showered and shaved without really looking at my own eyes, and went back to the hospital.

Michael had promised to sit there until I got back, and he had, even though I was hours later than I told him I'd be. He was reading a book, his feet tucked under the railing on Justin's bed.

"Hey." He got up and hugged me. It took me a while to remember what to do, but after a minute, I hugged him back. I felt myself biting the inside of my cheek; it was already raw.

I cleared my throat. "Anything?"

Michael shook his head. "Jennifer's out in the waiting room, I think. She might have talked to the doctor." He got up. "I'll see if she's there on my way out."

I looked down at Justin's face. They'd taken him off the respirator, and stopped the drugs, so his hands were tied to the bed again, in case he tried to rip out his IVs. I watched him swallow, and leaned over, itching to push back his hair, afraid to hurt him. "Justin."

I said his name all the time. It was probably stupid. He probably couldn't hear me. But sometimes I thought he could. Sometimes he opened his eyes.

The nurse came in, and I saw Debbie sitting in the hallway with Michael when the door opened. She was probably telling him to go home.

It had been three days now, well outside the 48-hour window that was supposed to be so important. Justin was off the respirator. His rash hadn't spread.

But all the things they'd said, the ones I'd only let in halfway – after-effects, hearing loss, cognitive impairment, neurological complications – I tried not to think about any of it. But the longer he just lay there, his face all wrinkled up, his head so rigid on the pillow, the harder it was.

He opened his eyes again. I moved slowly into his line of vision, and looked into them. They were blue, and bloodshot, and full of pain, but they looked like Justin's eyes. I felt a small part of me relax, and then tense up again when his lids slammed shut without any flicker of recognition.

The machines on the wall kept making their little sounds and flashing their little lights. The nurses a few feet away glanced at us, then away. I needed to get out of there, but I needed to be where I could see him.

I started to stand up, and stopped when Dr. Kohler came in the side door. She smiled at me reassuringly, and stood looking down at Justin.

She unfastened his right hand from the bed, and held his fingers in hers. "Justin." Her voice was soft, almost motherly. "Justin." I saw his lashes move, and a little sliver of his eyes showing through. Her voice was still incredibly soft. "Can you squeeze my hand, Justin? Even a little?"

I held my breath, and watched his face, then looked at his fingers lying in hers.

I saw them flutter, and then I saw his eyes close again, but softly, like he was falling asleep.

I looked at Dr. Kohler, and she was smiling. "That's good."

I felt my lips fold in, and nodded. I wasn't sure I could talk.

**Justin's POV**

I didn't know why she wanted me to squeeze her hand, but I did it. Then I remembered worrying about not being able to move my hand, but I already had.

The whole thing confused me, and I wondered if this was a nightmare. But my head was hurting and I tried to go back to sleep, so I could wake up when the headache was gone.

I felt someone pick up my hand again, and I cracked my eyes open as little as I could so the light wouldn't get in. I tried to say something, because it was Brian, and he was crying. But no sound came out.  
 **  
Brian's POV**

Justin's eyes were open, just a sliver, like before. But he was looking at me, his head turning the tiniest bit in my direction. I tried to smile at him, but I couldn't do it. I swear, I really tried.

I felt his fingers move against my palm. It wasn't a squeeze, really. It was hardly more than a flutter. And then I did smile, even if it wasn't much.

I took a shaky breath, and gently squeezed his hand. He opened his eyes a little more, and they looked confused. I saw him lick his lips.

"Do you want some water?" I wasn't sure he could have it.

"Unnnhh." I didn't know what that meant, but I guessed he was probably pretty dry. His lips were a cracked mess.

I started to let go of his hand to get the nurse. "Hang on…"

"Unnnnhh." It was the same sound, but a little more… urgent. I frowned at him. "I'm just going to ask the nurse if you can have some water." He looked distressed, and I stopped.

But I didn't have to leave him after all; Julie heard me talking, and came over, a huge smile on her face. "Well, look who's awake."

I bit my lip. "I think he's thirsty."

She kept smiling. "I'll bet he is." She disappeared and came back with a plastic cup with a straw sticking out of it, and held it to Justin's lips.

At first he didn't seem to know what to do, but after a minute he let her put the straw in his mouth. Then she waited patiently while he figured out what to do to get some water flowing.

He swallowed twice, and then stopped. She took the cup away, and softly squeezed my arm. "I'm going to let the doctor know." And she left.

I sat back down. His eyes were closed, but I thought he looked less like he was in agony, and more like he was just tired, and sick. I picked up his hand again.

And after a minute, I felt him squeeze my fingers.

**Justin's POV**

The next time I woke up, my mom was sitting next to me. "Justin."

I couldn't figure out what she was doing there, or why she sounded so happy. I wanted to ask about Brian, and I felt a weird feeling of nervousness about it. I licked my lips.

She was holding a cup and straw to my mouth when I remembered. I remembered Brian sitting there, holding my hand. I remembered … something else, light hurting my eyes. It still did, but if I didn't open them all the way, it wasn't too bad.

After I swallowed more water, I blinked carefully, then tried to say something. "What…?"

She leaned close to me, and put just a feather-touch through my hair. It hurt, and I flinched away. I saw a shadow in her eyes, and I felt that nervousness again. "You've been sick, Justin."

I'd figured that out. "What?" I really couldn't get more than that out.

She didn't answer right away. "You had… have… meningitis."

I tried to think what that was, but I couldn't. It sounded familiar. Thinking about it hurt my head, so I closed my eyes and went back to sleep.

**Brian's POV**

Jennifer was out in the hall when I got back, talking to Lindsay.

"Isn't anyone with Justin?" I still didn't want him waking up alone in that room.

"Michael's in there," Lindsay said. "And hello to you, too."

I kissed her cheek. "Sorry."

She shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I'm just so glad he's coming out of this."

"He asked me what was wrong with him," Jennifer said. "I told him he had meningitis, but it didn't seem to register with him."

The doctors had told me he'd be sleepy and confused for a while, but I still hated to hear that. I pushed into his room, and saw Michael smiling at him. Justin's eyes were open, even though he still had his lids partially closed.

I went around to the other side of the bed, and Justin's head shifted slightly to follow me. I sat down, carefully, on the edge, and held his hand. He still had IVs going in everywhere; since his blood pressure had come back up to normal, his veins were all working again, so they kept finding new things to stick into him.

I glanced at Michael across the bed. "Is this guy bothering you?"

Justin didn't smile, but I thought he kind of got the idea I was trying to joke around. And I thought maybe that also made him get the idea he wasn't at death's door or anything. Whatever the reason, his eyes slipped shut again, and I felt his hand relax in mine.

Michael sighed. "God."

I just nodded. We sat there for a long time.

The next day, they moved Justin back to the sixth floor, not his old room, but one in the regular part of the hospital. It was still small, but big enough for more than two visitors at a time.

I'd pulled the second chair over and had my feet on it, and was resting my cheek on my arm when I heard him making that noise again. I looked at him. "Do you want some water?"

He licked his lips, and I gave him some, then he looked at me. They'd turned the lights off, although the room was never really dark, and I could see his eyes were almost all the way open.

"What happened?" Getting out two words seemed to exhaust him.

I'd thought about what I was going to tell him, so I was ready. "You were supposed to have lunch with your mom, and when you didn't show up, she went to the house. I was in LA on business, do you remember?"

He seemed to be thinking about it. He didn't shake his head, just said "Unnnnhh" again.

"Well, I was. She found you passed out by the bed. You'd told me you had a headache the night before. You have bacterial meningitis."

I offered him some more water, because he was licking his lips. He drank a little, and then I put the cup down. "Daphne had it too. You probably got it from her. But she's okay now. Her mother's been talking to your mother."

That was the thing I had most dreaded telling him, but at least I didn't have to tell him she was still unconscious. No one really knew if either of them would be completely all right, but there was time enough to figure all that out later.

Justin didn't really seem to follow what I said. "Daph's sick?"

"Yeah. She has the same thing you have." I waited.

"Okay." He didn't seem to understand, so I let it go.

His eyes drifted shut again, but I sat there for a long, long time before I finally fell asleep in the chair.

**Justin's POV**

I'm not really sure what changed. I still had a headache. My neck hurt, my back hurt, my legs hurt. I still couldn't move my head without it feeling like someone was sticking a knife in it, and I didn't like to open my eyes all the way. But one time I woke up and thought, "I'm in the hospital, and I have meningitis, and that's Brian sleeping in a chair next to my bed." And it all hung together and made sense.

I looked at Brian through my lashes for a while, and finally his eyes fluttered open. I love seeing him when he first wakes up, before he remembers he has to be guarded and tough all the time. That's how he looked then, open and a little scared.

I thought maybe I should try smiling. My lips were dry and cracked, and it hurt to move them, but I must have done all right because his whole face lit up for a second. And then he leaned over me, and very, very carefully kissed my cheek.

"Hey." My voice was rough.

His hand hesitated before he touched my hair, but he let his fingers just ghost over it. It hurt, but just a little, and I smiled again.

He smiled back. "You seem better."

I tried to think about that. "Maybe."

He almost laughed. It was more like a huff. "Trust me."

"Okay." I just lay there, looking at his face through my half-opened eyes. Every now and then he'd squeeze my fingers, and I'd squeeze them back. I wasn't sure why, but it made his eyes light up.

"Well, this is a nice change." I thought I recognized the voice. It looked like a doctor.

Brian didn't look at her, just at me. "Yeah. He seems a lot better."

"It's about time." She poked and prodded me for a while, and I flinched when she examined my neck and shone a light in my eyes. "Still photosensitive? That's not unusual."

She looked at Brian. "We'll test his hearing, but even if he's lost some, it could come back."

My hearing was fine, and after a minute, I told her so. She gave me a huge smile. "That's wonderful, Justin." She tilted her head a little to the side. "Everyone here's been very worried about you." She glanced at Brian. "Especially him."

"He does that." I heard Brian give a sort of snort, and she smiled again.

"Can I go home?" My voice sounded a little whiney. I cleared my throat, and it hurt so much I had to close my eyes and concentrate on not crying for a minute.

When I opened them again, she was shaking her head. "Not for a while, Justin. Let's just see what the next few days give us."

Few days? Brian followed her out of the room, and when he came back, I frowned at him. "I want to go home."

He looked at me, and nodded. "Let me talk to them in the morning."

I decided that was the best I was going to get, and went to sleep.

Over the next few days, I tried to be patient while they stuck me with needles and woke me up all night long to check my blood pressure and take my temperature. Every time I opened my eyes at night, Brian was there, and the nurses acted like that was perfectly normal. And so did I, at first.

And then I noticed that no matter what time of day it was, someone was always there. It was usually Brian, sometimes my mom. But always someone.

The first time I woke up and saw Michael sitting there, his face broke out into a huge smile, and he got up and carefully hugged me. I couldn't talk much then, but he chattered away, and I fell asleep listening to his voice. It was kind of soothing.

My favorite visitor was Ben. He'd be sitting there grading papers or reading, and at some point he'd look up, take off his glasses, and give me that lazy smile. He never asked me how I was feeling, or if my head hurt. He just joked with me about something that happened at school, or that Hunter had told him, and I could forget for two minutes that I was in the hospital before I fell back to sleep.

"I know what you're doing," I told Brian the next night.

He raised an eyebrow in my direction. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"I haven't woken up even once and not had someone in this room with me. I don't need a babysitter, you know."

Brian stuck his tongue in his cheek, shifted from one foot to the other, and heaved a sigh. "I know."

I would have raised an eyebrow, but my head still hurt too much for that, so I just waited.

"I just didn't want…"

"Me to think you weren't here? I know you're here." I watched his face change, and his lashes brush down, then back up. I kept my voice soft. "And I love you for it. But you know, you look like hell."

Brian laughed. "Yeah, well, Sunshine, let me break the news to you gently: You do, too."

"I'm sick. What's your excuse?"

"My partner's sick."

I smiled. It still hurt to laugh. "Brian. Go home. I'll be okay for one night."

He looked at me for a minute, then sat on the edge of the bed, one arm on the far side of me. I lay there, looking at him, and he bent down so his face was close to mine. "I know you will."

I brushed back his hair. "Then what?"

I watched his eyes, and he seemed to be trying to think about what to say. He touched my hair, then pulled his hand back. I suddenly missed his hands in my hair. I missed a lot of things, and I felt my throat get tight. "When you were really sick, the doctor said you could die." He stopped talking, and I held my breath. I'd known that, in fact, he'd told me, but it hit me in a weird way, to hear it again, in the dark, with his face so close to mine.

"And she was going on, just kind of telling me things, but I couldn't really hear any of it. I just kept hearing her saying that you could die. But then she looked at me, and she said that you were young and otherwise healthy, and the outcome would all depend on how hard you fought."

I tried to swallow, but I couldn't. "I'm okay." My voice sounded really strained.

He nodded. "I know. And I knew you'd be okay, when she said that." He touched my hair again, even more carefully. "Because you're the most persistent, relentless person I know."

I wished I could have laughed, or kissed him, because either of those things might have made it easier on Brian. But I really couldn't. Hearing him say that, with his face that raw – it fucking flattened me. There wasn't really anything I could say, so I just said, "I love you."

"Yeah," he said, and he smiled a little bit. "I love you, too."

I took a breath. "Now, sit here until I fall asleep. And then go home and sleep in our bed. And find out when I can go home. I'm sick of this place."

He snorted. "I know what you mean."

**Brian's POV**

I'd asked Dr. Kohler when she thought Justin might be able to go home, and she said she'd stop by his room. I'd gone home to shower and change, and when I came back that evening, she was talking to Justin. He looked flushed and a little angry.

"What's going on?"

He barely glanced at me. "I just want to know why I can't get out of here."

Dr. Kohler sounded frustrated. "I was telling him…"

Justin hit the bed with his left hand. "Either release me in the morning, or I'm going now without your release."

She sighed. "Justin…"

I cut her off. "Why can't he go?" I knew he was still weak, but he was done with the antibiotics and steroids, and was sitting up in bed most of the time.

She looked at Justin for permission, and he shrugged. "Go ahead."

She sighed. "His last neuro exam wasn't normal. He still has a slight temperature. He is still having debilitating headaches that require continuous pain medication. His kidneys still need monitoring. He can barely go further than the bathroom when he gets out of bed…"

I interrupted her. "What do you mean, his last neuro exam wasn't normal?"

I watched Justin's face while she explained it to me, and didn't listen that closely to what she was saying. I just heard the usual things I'd learned to listen for… "normal for this stage of recovery," and all the other code phrases for "we don't know what the fuck is going on but we're not panicking at this time."

I thanked her and said Justin and I would talk, and she reluctantly left. I stood staring at him, and he finally looked at me, and gave that same shrug again.

I went over to the closet and got the bag of his stuff I'd brought from home. I pulled out his sketchpad and some pencils, and tossed them in his lap. "Do you want me to stay or leave while you do this?"

He stared at me. I stared back.

He picked up the sketchpad, and opened it to a blank page. I sat down, and started to flip through a magazine someone had brought him. For all I knew, it was Good Housekeeping; I really wasn't looking at it. I was listening for the sound of Justin's pencil scratching at the paper.

I finally heard it, soft and tentative. I tried not to hold my breath, and made myself not look at him, but when it started sounding normal, sounding fast and sure, I couldn't help it; I smiled.

"You can stop pretending to read now." He sounded happy.

I looked at him. "Everything working?"

He grinned. "Looks that way."

I nodded. "Good. So, any other bodily functions you want to test drive before we tell them to let you the fuck out of this place?"

Justin laughed, and I got up and sat on the bed next to him, pushing the sketchbook away. He brushed my hair off my face, and I leaned down and kissed him.

His lips were still chapped, and his skin felt rough. His hair wasn't clean, and he smelled like drugs and sickness. But nothing and no one I'd ever touched felt better than he did that afternoon.

The doctor apparently believed Justin's threats, and agreed he could go home in two days. He grumbled and complained, but I said I needed some time to get everything ready for him.

Debbie and Michael had gone to the house and cleaned the bedroom and bathroom. When Deb told me what they were going to do, I warned her to be careful, and she just laughed. "I've cleaned up worse things than vomit, from something more dangerous than this." She gestured in the direction of the ICU, as if to dismiss every pathogen other than HIV as unworthy even of contempt. "I know how to wear gloves, Brian. Don't worry about it."

So when I finally brought him home, at least the bedroom didn't smell like stale puke.  
 **  
Justin's POV**

I went home. I fell asleep in the car, and had to stop halfway up the stairs to the second floor, but I was never so glad to see our bed in my life.

It felt strange to get into bed naked, and I liked it. The sheets were so silky, and the duvet was so warm. It was nothing like the hospital bed. I just lay back on the pillows, and sighed.

"You should probably put something on." Brian's voice sounded regretful.

I couldn't even open my eyes. "Mmm hmmm."

I heard him laugh, then felt him sit next to me. "Here."

I peeled open one eye, and sighed again. "It feels so good." They'd let me shower at the hospital the day before, and it felt wonderful to be clean, on the high thread count sheets. But I put on the t-shirt and sweats he'd brought me.

He slid into bed next to me, hypocritically naked. I was more than half asleep, but I rolled into him, feeling him wrap himself around me. He said something into my hair, but I couldn't stay awake enough to hear it.

When I woke up, I knew where I was right away. I was home. In our bed. And I was alone, too, which was odd and nice at the same time.

I stretched and felt the ache in my neck and back echo the pain in my head. I barely noticed; the next time someone told me they had a headache, I was going to ask them if they'd ever had bacterial meningitis. If they said no, I was going to tell them, "Then you've never fucking had a headache."

Brian must have had some kind of radar, because he came in the door, and smiled when he saw I was awake. "I was thinking you might sleep until tomorrow."

I yawned. "What time is it?"

"It's dinner time. And Daphne called."

I smiled. She'd gone home two days before I did, and I hadn't seen her yet. She was having some trouble with her hearing in one ear, but they were hoping it would be back to normal in a few weeks. "I'm hungry."

"Imagine my shock and surprise. What do you feel like?"

I thought about it. "Pancakes."

Brian laughed. "Try again."

I shook my head. "That's all I want. Pancakes. With butter and syrup." I thought about it. "And a side of bacon. And coffee."

He looked horrified. "You want to go to the diner."

"Yes, but regretfully, I have to admit I'm not up to it." I waited for the light to dawn.

"You want me to make you pancakes?" He sounded completely stunned.

I laughed, softly, because it still made my head hurt. "They have mixes."

He looked at me strangely. "Do we have any here?"

"Doubtful."

He stuck his tongue in his cheek. "You're serious?"

I nodded.

"I suppose your mommy might come over and make pancakes." He paused. "Or Debbie. Or Emmett. Or Lindsay. Or almost anyone we know, given how glad they all are you're home."

I smiled. "Try my mom first. I'm going to call Daph."

Brian went off muttering, and I called Daphne. She was at her parents' house, and her mom brought the phone to her.

"God, Justin… I can't believe this."

I chewed on my lip. She sounded like she was crying. "Daph? What's wrong?"

She sniffled. "I'm just a weepy mess, that's all."

"Yeah, well, I know the feeling."

We sat there for a minute, and then she sighed. "Alfe came to see me."

"Wow. What was that like?"

"My hair looked like shit."

I would have rolled my eyes if it wouldn't have hurt too much. "I'm sure he gave a fuck about that."

"I gave a fuck."

"Don't make me laugh. It hurts."

"Tell me about it."

After we got off the phone, I went into the bathroom. While I pissed, I added having a catheter stuck up my dick to the list of things I was never, ever going to do again.

I was back in bed and thinking longingly about food when Brian came back. "Your mother's on her way. With Debbie and all necessary supplies. I hope you're as hungry as you think you are."

I smiled. "I am."

He came and sat next to me, and I let my fingers wrap around his wrist. He just stared at me, pushing my hair back with his other hand.

"When do you go back to work?"

Brian shrugged. "Couple of days. Ted and Cynthia have everything under control." He paused. "Well, that's their story, anyway."

I grinned. "You'll go in, and they'll have expanded to three other cities and put on a second story."

Brian groaned. "No more construction. Ever."

I let my hand pet his hair. "There, there. It's all over."

He carefully slid in next to me, and I tangled my legs with his, feeling his jeans rough against the fabric of my sweatpants. He sighed, and pulled me close. "Does that hurt?"

"Breathing hurts. I don't even notice it anymore."

Brian gently stroked my hair, and I murmured a little. We lay there like that until I heard a car in the driveway, and he got up. "Do you want to eat up here?"

"I'll come down."

I pulled on some thick socks, and went down to the kitchen. My mom held both my hands, and her eyes were shining. "Justin, I'm so happy you're home."

Debbie gave a big laugh that hurt my ears. "And hungry. That's the best news I've ever heard."

Brian was making coffee, and I sat at the kitchen table, watching Debbie boss my mother around. Brian was trying to give them advice on using the grill, and Deb smacked him with her spatula. "I've been making pancakes since before you were born. Go sit down and hold Justin's hand or something."

So he did. And when the food was ready, I really could only eat a few bites, but no one said anything. They all just smiled and laughed.

I wanted to go into the living room, but Brian made me go back to bed. I fell asleep listening to them talking downstairs, but when I woke up, he was in bed next to me, one leg thrown over mine, his arm snaked across my waist.

I smiled a little, and went back to sleep.


End file.
